MANY years ago, long before an amateur guitar player from the north of England became our unelected Prime Minister, there was a show on primetime TV called Spitting Image.

It made fun of anyone in the public eye, particularly politicians, by casting them as grotesque puppets. It wasn’t meant to be serious; it was satire, and people laughed.

It still exists, but it’s gone underground and is no longer mainstream.

Poking fun at authority and officialdom is a sign of a healthy democracy. It’s a way to criticise the incompetent and the ludicrous.

When the ruling class tends to get a little oversensitive about criticism in any shape or form, you know things are on the downward slide.

A lack of humour or free speech in society is pretty much the canary in the coal mine.

This was hammered home recently in the wake of a humble, slightly tongue-in-cheek opinion piece that we wrote on the optics of local authorities slapping each other on the back and receiving awards for the development of Abergavenny.

We made the “mistake” of pointing out that the awards were given when the town was littered with more empty shops and spaces than at any other point in history.

It wasn’t pretending to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative piece of journalism, and we weren’t denying Aber was a great place to live.

We were simply highlighting that a town renowned far and wide as the Gateway to Wales could be even greater with a few fewer empty shops and spaces and some decisive action,

Fair enough, you might think.

Not in the sewers of social media!

Almost instantly we faced accusations of negativity and poor journalism.

Talk about shooting the messenger.

Yes, we know that compared with a lot of towns, Aber is doing well, but you shouldn’t keep measuring yourself against worst-case scenarios. It’s bad for your self-esteem.

Labour types often accuse the Chronicle of having some sort of skewed bias in favour of anyone they’re not. We don’t.

Yet they don’t help their situation by seeing persecution and criticism in the most innocuous articles.

Someone on Facebook accused us of only writng the article because Abergavenny was a town with a Labour Council. For effect, they then added, “We see you!”

What does that even mean - “We see you!” To my mind, it translates as there’s a large political and unseen force monitoring everything you say or write in case we don’t approve.

It’s authoritarian and the sort of thing you’d expect to see in Fascism for Beginners.

One councillor announced in the comments section of the same article how disappointed they were in the “Chron’s relentlessly negative coverage.”

Relentlessly is a strong word. It’s also an emotive word. And in the context of the general tone of our coverage, it’s also complete nonsense.

What isn’t, though, is council tax rises, a visible reduction in community services, parking charges, business rates, potholes, and, of course, empty buildings.

Are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand and chant “Everything is Wonderful?” for fear of upsetting the apple cart?

The same councillor later added a line about how they just wished “our local paper seemed as proud of the town as most of those of us who live here are.”

A low blow, and by taking the criticism of an authority and trying to make it the criticism of a town, you’re practicing divisive politics.

For the record, a political party is not the country and a council is not the town.

Neither, for that matter, is a newspaper.

However, the Chronicle has been here since 1871 and for well over a century we have helped the town tell the story of itself.

Of course we want what’s best for Aber. But politicians and people who spend too much time on social media and need a pantomime villain to validate their Star Wars view of the universe, like to think otherwise.

That’s fine. We’re the fourth estate. We can take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the occasional protest.

But what is hard to stomach is official bodies and authority figures that think their position makes them beyond reproach, unaccountable, and immune to all criticism.

Like a wise man once said, “You ain’t all that!”